The Calling l-1

by Neil Cross

  ‘Ask away,’ says Hillman.

  But Luther is speaking to Maggie. ‘There’s a lot of journalists in the world,’ he says. ‘Why did he come to you?’

  ‘None taken,’ she says. ‘Obviously, he listens to the show. When you’re in the public eye, people imagine they’ve got a relationship with you. So, yeah. He trusts me.’

  ‘But he was pretty specific.’ Luther checks his notes and recites: ‘That thing you did. Adrian York.’

  ‘Ah,’ she grins. ‘1995. My annus mirabilis. My one and only ever report for Newsnight. Passion piece. Got nommed.’

  ‘Nommed?’

  ‘Nominated. The Margaret Wakely Award for Contribution to Awareness of Women’s Issues in Television Journalism.’

  ‘You win?’

  The grin widens. ‘Always the bridesmaid.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Luther says. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. But the name — Adrian York. It doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘That was kind of the point,’ she says. ‘It was an outrageous case, really. Still makes me angry to think about it.’

  Luther and Howie take their seats and let Maggie tell it the way she wants to.

  ‘Basically,’ she says, ‘decent working-class woman makes a bad marriage. Chrissie York. She’s got one child, Adrian. The marriage breaks down. The husband’s got an Australian passport. Chrissie begins to worry he plans to kidnap the child, take him back to the old country.’

  ‘It happens,’ Luther says.

  ‘Too right it happens. Meanwhile, the son makes certain allegations about his father. Drug use, prostitutes and so on. The mother reports the allegations. Some court-appointed psychologist decides she’s coached Adrian to lie in order to discredit the father. She’s therefore causing him what they call “emotional harm”, which is a meaningless catch-all phrase if ever you heard one. And when Adrian actually does go missing, police are slow to respond because they assume the mother’s loony tunes and the father’s done it for the kid’s own good. So the father’s their prime and only suspect, if suspect’s the right word.

  ‘Eventually, and this is like eighteen months later, they track the father down to some shithole in Sydney. He denies all knowledge of snatching his son, wants nothing to do with him. Denies the kid is even his. But by then the case is cold and the story’s old. Never found any traction with the media. Or the police. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. Do we know where the father is now?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘But he definitely wasn’t Pete Black?’

  ‘He was Aussie. Pete Black sounds pure London to me.’

  ‘Me too. What happened to the mother?’

  ‘Last I heard, she was in hospital. Overdose. But that’s a long time ago.’

  Luther shakes his head.

  Howie mouths the word: Blimey.

  ‘Chrissie York never saw her son again,’ says Maggie Reilly, with more than a hint of the old anger; the feral ghost of the news journalist she used to be, wishes she still was. ‘She never had any idea what happened to him. Well, she had lots of ideas, obviously. But no proof. And nobody seemed to care. It was an ugly little story. All there was to show was this woman who’d tried her best, who’d been let down by everyone — because she married badly, because she was working class, because she sounded like a hysterical woman. And because there were sexier stories around. Easier stories.’

  ‘And this is what your piece was about? The piece Pete Black mentioned?’

  ‘Yeah. It was the best piece I ever did.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  She gives him a brittle grin. ‘It’s on my website. Click on Archive.’

  He nods that he will. Then he says, ‘Anyone ever call you about it? Show undue interest? Write letters? Whatever?’

  ‘Never. Remember, you’re talking about a long-ago abduction that nobody remembers.’

  ‘Except Pete Black from Woking.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And he’s never been in contact before?’

  Maggie gets her fair share of funny phone calls. Do a quick google and there she is: her dimpled, smiling face photoshopped onto some younger, bustier and definitely more naked woman’s body.

  ‘I’ve had my issues,’ she says. ‘Restraining orders and all the rest of it. It comes with the territory.’

  ‘Do you have a list of names?’

  ‘No, but my agent does.’

  ‘And they’ll be happy to pass it on?’

  ‘More than.’

  She gives her agent’s details. Howie writes them down.

  Then Maggie says, ‘Actually, there was one person who kept showing an interest.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Police officer in Bristol. Pat Maxwell. A few months before Adrian York, there’d been an attempted abduction. Just a few miles away. A little boy called Thomas Kintry.’

  ‘She thought they were linked?’

  ‘She seemed pretty positive. Apparently no one else did.’

  ‘When’s the last time you spoke to Pat Maxwell?’

  ‘Gosh, this is years back. She’d be retired now, I expect. Assuming she’s even still around.’

  Luther and Howie walk silently through the office, back to the lift. The doors open. They step inside.

  Howie presses the button for ground.

  The doors close.

  She says, ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Pete Black?’

  ‘Either he’s a stalker,’ Luther says, ‘some freak who’s genuinely been a fan of this woman for fifteen-odd years. In which case, you’d expect some kind of prior communication.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or he’s the man who kidnapped and killed Adrian York. And maybe tried to abduct that other little boy.’

  ‘Kintry. So why does he make this call?’

  ‘Maybe because Maggie was the only one who ever paid attention to what he’d done. But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Does it feel right to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Because it’s not right, is it? It’s not right.’

  ‘You think he’s serious about giving back the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t get him. I can’t see him.’

  The doors open.

  They step out of the elevator, pass across the bright lobby, shove through the news crews and pass on, into the rainy night.

  Then Luther stops.

  Commuters, shoppers and tourists flow round him like water surging round a boulder.

  ‘Adrian York,’ he says. ‘That’s an abduction that nobody even knew was an abduction. Right?’

  Howie nods, knowing not to interrupt.

  ‘So. Victimology one-oh-one: what if that’s why he chose Adrian York? The other abduction, the Kintry kid, if they really are connected… it sounds like an unplanned snatch and grab gone wrong.’

  ‘A trial run,’ Howie says.

  ‘Exactly. So, say he was learning. Refining his methods. He tries brute force in broad daylight. That doesn’t work out. Maybe he’s closer to getting caught than we realize. So he decides to go another way.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘I’m saying, what if he knew about the complaints the mother made.’

  ‘Chrissie York.’

  ‘What if he knows about the complaints Chrissie York made to social services? What if he knew they treated her with contempt? If he knew that, he knew he could snatch the York kid right off the street. And if he’s fast enough, and nobody sees… nobody would believe it had even happened.’

  ‘Which makes it the perfect abduction,’ Howie says. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that he’s completely silent about it for fifteen years. So why start phoning radio stations now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luther says. ‘Maybe because the Adrian York thing went well and the Lambert thing didn’t?’

  ‘Didn’t in what way? He got the baby.’

  ‘Depends what he needed from it. But may
be he’s feeling embarrassed. Feeling the need to justify what he did.’

  ‘But why does he feel that need now?’

  ‘Because he’s a psychopath. He doesn’t feel shame or guilt. He’s superior. He’s unique. He looks down on us. He detests us. But it matters to him that we know he’s better than us. He needs our admiration.’

  On the way to the car he calls Teller. He asks her to call Avon amp; Somerset, get them to bike over the Adrian York and Thomas Kintry cold case files.

  He asks for the contact details of Detective Inspector Patricia Maxwell, probably retired.

  He calls Ian Reed at home and asks him to look over Maggie Reilly’s old news report to see if anything strikes him as relevant or odd.

  They’re all long shots: the York case is sixteen or seventeen years old. But the ground has to be covered.

  Then he phones Zoe and asks her to meet him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Luther walks through a night swarm of briefcases, umbrellas, pinstripe suits and taxis, then steps into Postman’s Park. He walks through the icy rain until he reaches a long wooden gallery that shelters a wall decorated with ceramic tiles.

  Waiting, he reads some of the tiles. Takes strange comfort from them:

  Elizabeth Coghlam, Aged 26, Of Church Path, Stoke

  Newington. Died saving her family and house by carrying blazing paraffin to the yard. Jan 1 1902

  Tobias Simpson, Died of exhaustion after saving many lives from the breaking ice at Highgate Ponds, Jan 25 1885

  Jeremy Morris, Aged 10, Bathing in the Grand Junction Canal.

  Sacrificed his life to help his sinking companion, Aug 2 1897

  It’s called ‘The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice’. They knew how to name things in the Victorian era.

  He turns and Zoe’s there, shivering wet in her coat and holding a takeaway coffee in each hand.

  ‘I saw the news,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’ He takes a coffee. ‘Bad day.’

  They stand next to each other, read the tiles. Sip coffee.

  She says, ‘Is the baby alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. Part of me hopes not.’

  ‘Will you be home tonight?’

  ‘I can’t. Rose has asked me to stay on.’

  In fact, Teller has ordered him to go home and get some sleep.

  He’s not needed: they’re pulling people off sick leave. Specialist surveillance units will be monitoring hospitals and late-night surgeries, drop-in centres. There are hundreds of coppers out there right now, waiting for Pete Black to show up somewhere on the sombre face of London; a baby bundled in his arms, alive or dead.

  Luther says, ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘Glass of wine, catch up on work. I spent two hours today with those sodding school kids.’

  ‘Lock the doors and windows,’ he says. ‘Set the alarm. Put on the deadbolts. Front door and back.’

  ‘I always lock the doors and the windows.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So why say it?’

  ‘To make me feel better.’

  ‘That’s the problem with all this,’ she says. ‘You spend all day in it. You see it everywhere.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s not everywhere.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘When we were kids,’ she says, ‘when you’d just started out, you went to this flat. An old woman had died alone. She’d been dead in her chair for about two years. She’d mummified.’

  ‘Irene,’ he says.

  ‘That’s her. You came home. We had that little flat on Victoria Road, that tiny little place with the shared bathroom and that weird couple downstairs. Wendy and Dave.’

  He smiles sadly, remembering.

  ‘I fell asleep before you got back,’ Zoe says. ‘You came in, sat on the edge of the bed. I watched you drink a pint of whisky in about ten minutes. It was the first time I ever saw you really cry.’

  He shrugs. ‘It was sad.’

  ‘I know it was sad, it was really sad. I still think about her sometimes.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘But that night, when you were drunk, you were angry. I mean, really angry. Scary angry.’

  He turns to her, not remembering. ‘Angry about what?’

  ‘The jokes they told. The police, the medical examiner, the ambulance crew. The lack of respect. You said they objectified her exactly like a killer would. And you got so angry at yourself, for not saying anything to them. Telling them to have more respect.’

  ‘I was a kid.’

  ‘And you wondered if you’d made a terrible mistake — done the wrong thing by joining the police.’ She brushes wet hair from her eyes. ‘That was the first time you talked about leaving the police. Sixteen years ago. And you’ve been talking about giving it up ever since.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you never have.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you never will.’

  He doesn’t answer that. How can he?

  She steps closer. They stand side by side, looking at the tiles. She says, ‘Have you ever heard of Bipolar Two Disorder?’

  He laughs.

  ‘It’s under-diagnosed,’ she says. ‘I looked it up. Hypomania often presents as high-functioning behaviour.’

  ‘I’m not manic. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘But you can’t sleep.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  ‘I mean, you don’t sleep at all. Not at all.’

  ‘So I’ll get pills.’

  ‘You say they cloud your thinking.’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘People with Bipolar Two are at a high risk of suicide.’

  ‘I’m not suicidal.’

  ‘Seriously? Not ever? It never crosses your mind?’

  ‘It crosses everyone’s mind. Now and again.’

  ‘Not mine.’

  ‘It’s just a thought pattern,’ he says. ‘Suicidal ideation: if I had to do it, how would I do it? It’s not an intent. It’s a game. Sort of.’

  ‘Hypomania in Bipolar Two Disorder manifests as anxiety and insomnia,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t do this to me now,’ he says. ‘Please. Not now.’

  ‘If not now, when?’

  ‘Soon. We’ll talk about it soon.’

  She laughs, and he catches the magnitude of her bitterness.

  ‘I promise,’ he says.

  ‘You always promise. It’s all you do.’

  ‘Then I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Maybe there’s nothing to say. Because we’ve both said it all, a hundred times. I’m as bored of saying it as you must be of hearing it.’

  He doesn’t answer.

  She says, ‘Look into my eyes, John. Look at me.’

  He turns. He looks at her. She’s wet. Elegant. Drenched in London rain. He loves her inexpressibly.

  She says, ‘What do you see?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Just you.’

  ‘And there’s your problem.’

  She gives him a look, years of weary love in it.

  He watches her walk away; perfectly poised and perfectly lost to him.

  When she’s gone, he drains the coffee and scrunches up the cup, then bins it and goes to meet Howie. She’s sitting behind the wheel on a meter, reading the Standard, late edition: Maggie Reilly on the front page looking grave and glamorous. A smaller insert shows the Lambert crime scene.

  ‘London awaits,’ Luther says.

  Howie grunts, folds the paper and jams it down the side of her seat. She’s left the engine and the heater running. The car’s uncomfortably warm.

  ‘Twitter’s going mad,’ she says. ‘Facebook. Dead Tree Press is running with it on their websites. Maggie Reilly’s all over the place. She’s doing the overnight show, apparently. She wants to be,’ she checks the interview in the Standard, ‘ on hand when he calls.’

  Luther leans over and tunes the car radio to London Talk FM. He and Howie
listen to the lonely and the lost and the mad rage about bringing back the death penalty.

  He stares ahead, at the constant snarl of traffic, the rainy lights shining red, amber, green. He looks at the people. Flitting by too fast to identify. A river of flesh, ever changing, never changing. The commuters with their briefcases and laptop bags, the kids in their jeans and urban coats.

  Eventually, he says, ‘You got a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Husband? Whatever.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Robert. Website designer. Bless him.’

  ‘When’s the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘When’s the last time you actually slept?’

  She doesn’t answer that. Just looks at the windscreen as she drives.

  ‘Go home,’ Luther says.

  ‘I can’t, Boss. Not tonight.’

  ‘There are hundreds of coppers out there looking for this man,’ he says. ‘Go home. Be with Robert. Sleep. Come in early tomorrow, take a look at the York and Kintry files. You’ll need a fresh eye for that.’

  Howie smiles as she drives. Looks like she wants to hug him.

  CHAPTER 11

  Reed sits at the table, opens the laptop, accesses Maggie Reilly’s website. He navigates to ARCHIVE, then scrolls to 1995, clicks on a file called: SOCIAL SERVICES, ‘EMOTIONAL HARM’ AND FAMILY JUSTICE.

  In the clip, Maggie Reilly wanders in front of some dilapidated council houses in a place called Knowle West.

  She looks pretty good, even doing a walk and talk, addressing the camera with exaggerated gravity:

  ‘A court-appointed psychologist, whom we cannot name for legal reasons, decided that the mother coached her son to lie, and was therefore causing her child “emotional harm”.

  ‘What all these cases have in common is the belief that mothers are putting their children at risk of what’s called “emotional harm”. Last year, more children were placed on the at-risk register for this so-called “emotional harm” than for sexual or physical abuse…’

  The doorbell rings.

  Reed pauses the footage and limps to the door.

  He opens it on Zoe Luther.

  He smiles. Then his face falls. Zoe’s a mess.

  She says, ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Reed, stepping back. ‘Yeah, of course.’